I will be arguing that currently illegal recreational drugs should be legalized

If drugs were legal, gangs in US inner cities would lose their main source of revenue. Latin American drug cartels currently killing tens of thousands and destabilizing governments would lose their source of income and dissolve. The Taliban and other terrorist groups would lose their main source of income. But what about increased drug use? Wouldn't an increase in drug users cause an increase in crime? No. In fact, crime among drug users would probably decrease. There would be an increase in drug users, yes. But where would these new drug users come from? The new users would have to come from the group of people that respected the law too much to use drugs while they were illegal. Those people are unlikely to become criminals. In addition, alcohol (Not meth, not PCP, not heroin, not crack—just alcohol) is the only drug that has been shown to cause aggression. [1] Violent crime committed by drug users is generally the result of people who were violent anyway. But what about addicts stealing to support their habit? If drugs were legalized, the price would fall to a small fraction of the black market price. Marijuana, for example, is predicted to fall by as much as 80% if Proposition 19 passes in California. [2] Desperate addicts would need less money to support their habit, so they wouldn't need to steal nearly as much.

Not only does strong law enforcement cause crime, it also often directly hurts law-abiding people. Many innocent people become victims of corrupt DEA agents or police officers in the drug war. Particularly dangerous to every private citizen are asset forfeiture laws, (police can seize anything they believe is connected with any crime, without a trial or hearing. They can keep confiscated property even if the owner can prove that he or she is innocent of any crime.), as the following example illustrates:
"The owner of a $5 million California ranch refused to negotiate with officials who wanted to merge the property into a park system. Subsequently a search warrant was obtained for a drug squad raid on the rancher's home. When applying for the warrant, police said an informant had reported thousands of marijuana plants on the property. Police did not tell the judge they were skeptical of the informant's credibility. In the application, one officer swore to what he was told by another officer, but the other officer's statement was false (by using this technique neither officer could be accused of perjury). Nor was the judge told that more than one secret warrantless search had recently been made of the ranch land without finding a single marijuana plant. Maps handed to all members of the strike team included handwritten notations saying '200 acres' and '80 acres sold for $800,000 in 1991 in same area.'" When the drug squad burst into the ranch couple's home, the wife started screaming, 'Don't shoot me! Don't kill me!' as team members manhandled her. The commotion apparently roused her sleeping husband who ran downstairs with a pistol. Squad members told him to lower the firearm, and as he obeyed they shot him to death. They ejected the woman from the house while she ran to her stricken husband. No marijuana was found in the house or anywhere on the 250 acres. The county prosecutor admitted the raid 'was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government.' Governmental desire to merge the ranch into parkland may explain the otherwise curious presence of U.S. Park Service agents in the drug raid team." [3]

But what about the public health dangers of the drugs themselves? Well, those dangers are often caused not by the drugs, but by our treatment of drugs as a criminal offense (The spread of HIV through used needles, for example). But, yes, many drugs are dangerous. However, they are not nearly as life-destroying as most people assume. As an example, I will discuss heroin, a drug widely believed to an extremely destructive drug. None of the other illegal drugs are as dangerous as most people believe, and I will show this for any other drugs my opponent wishes to mention.

Heroin- This drug is said to be immensely pleasurable, supposedly many times more so than an orgasm, so good that users get addicted for life after one hit. Then, once addicted, get higher and higher doses to attempt to get back to the original high, ruining their life in the process. These claims are largely false. First, a heroin high is nowhere near as good as most believe. Researchers injecting heroin into test subjects found that the vast majority were indifferent to the feeling or disliked it. [4] The actual high is basically several hours of blocking out everything. Food, sex, jobs, friends, pain, frustrations, and everything else no longer matter. Generally, only a person that already had problems, someone that wanted to escape from reality, would have a compulsive craving for this feeling. But what about physical addiction, like how smokers have physical cravings for nicotine? Studies of users show that physical dependence does not develop easily. A user would have to inject pure, unadulterated heroin three times a day for two straight weeks to develop a level of dependence detectable by medical instruments. [5] With diluted street heroin, it is even harder to develop physical dependence. Another false claim is that once addicted, heroin users are addicts for life, because it is so hard to get off heroin. Most users have few problems with withdrawal; which, physically, is generally no worse than a bad cold, and over in a few days. [7] Of course, those are just the physical symptoms. Many addicts use heroin to escape their problems. Since those problems come back once the heroin wears off, often worse than they were before, addicts just use more heroin, creating a vicious cycle. These are the people that have tremendous difficulty getting off heroin; and this type of addict has more to do with the person than the drug. As for the effect of heroin use on one's life: When most people think of a heroin user, they think of a desperate addict living on the streets, stealing to pay for his habit. This image is not the typical heroin user. [8] In 1971, Washington DC police captain Gerald M. Caplan, said "more than 100 officers were taking heroin. How did we learn about them? Not because their performance was poor. . . We took urine specimens." A study of college student GPA's found no significant difference between users and non users. [9]

[8] Blum Richard H., et al. Students and Drugs: College and High School Observations. The Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series and the Jossey-Bass Series in Higher Education (published jointly). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1969.

Point 1: Increased drug use. If drugs are made legal, a new influx of users would be created as people would no longer fear punishment for using drugs. Whether people have done drugs or not, they are aware that they are generally considered enjoyable and addicting, thus people will be drawn into their destructive spectrum. I wont go too in detail on this because, looking at my opponent's arguments, he doesn't seem to disagree that there will be more drug users, rather just says that it wont be a bad thing.

Point 2: Hospital overcrowding

Using drugs causes severe health damages. From source 1, you see that using illegal drugs causes heart attacks, respiratory failure, strokes, vomiting, and/or brain damage, just to name a few. With more people taking drugs in light of their legalization, you will experience a drastically increased number of people harming themselves with these legalized drugs. And when people get sick, where do they go? The hospital. Source 2 details how in 2006, over 958,000 people were hospitalized for illegal drug use. So we recognize that people are indeed hospitalized.

But with hundreds of thousands of new drug users destroying their health, these numbers will only increase. Hospitals everywhere will become flooded with new patients. With hospitals already struggling with overcrowding now, who knows what would happen if there were so many more sick people that there simply wasn't room for them.

Overcrowding has several impacts, described in source 3, such as delayed treatment or service, patient's symptoms, weakened physician effectiveness, or even violence.

This is why we should keep drugs illegal, to stop this new wave of drug users from coming to fruition and flooding our hospitals with more sick people.

Point 3: Work productivity

With more people using drugs it will inevitably lead to increased people coming to work high. Source 4 explains that using drugs at work leads to decreased productivity, increased insurance costs, harms to the company's profits, and increased risk for accidents. Again, with thousands of more people using drugs in light of legalizing, this becomes a severe national issue due to the sheer number of people working while high.

Onto his arguments.

He says legalizing solves for drug cartels and inner city gangs.

First lets realize, criminalizing any crime causes an underground market to be created of it. That doesn't mean we should legalize. For instance, under my opponent's logic, we should legalize rape to solve for underground human trafficking markets. Or we should legalize theft to prevent the formation of Ocean's 11 type of organizations. Or we could legalize murder, so terrorist groups wouldn't be secretly convening as to how to kill more Americans.

His second point is that drugs do not cause crime. I agree. There's really no scientifically way to link drug use to it.

I also agree with the stealing point brought up. I do not believe these are good arguments as to why drugs should stay illegal, there are other stronger ones.

Then he brings up how citizens are hurt by drug investigations. Again, people are also hurt by murder investigations and false rape allegations. Innocents are charged for murder in some cases, that doesn't warrant legalization of it. Further, the article he cited does provide a rather sad story. However this is more against corrupt police officers then the drug war. Assuming drugs were legal, you're going to tell me that the police weren't going to find another way to search the house? They would surely find some other false allegation to get a warrant. And again, it is the police at fault and not the law.

Then he gets ready to talk about the harms of drugs (mainly heroin) itself, but he doesn't actually say anything about it being medically unhealthy. His main point was that heroin is not truly addictive. Whether or not heroin or drugs in general have a physical dependency to them, people still use them repeatedly. The result is still the same whether the addiction be physical or psychological. People use the drug over and over, and this leads to the severe health damages described in my second point.

So to prevent hundreds of thousands of new drug users from coming to fruition, flooding hospitals, and harming companies they work for, we must keep them criminalized.

P1: I do agree that legalization of drugs would likely cause increased drug use. But a small increase at most—not a massive influx of new users. Take Portugal, for example. My opponent claims that, "If drugs are made legal, a new influx of users would be created as people would no longer fear punishment for using drugs." But the empirical evidence from Portugal's decriminalization of drugs contradicts this. It wasn't the same thing as legalization—producing and trafficking drugs is still illegal—but drug use is no longer punished as a crime. Portuguese drug users "no longer fear punishment for using drugs." If my opponent were correct, drug use would increase significantly. But that isn't what happened. Hard drug use stayed approximately the same or decreased overall, and all drug use decreased among youth. [1] Legalization is different from decriminalization, and would likely have somewhat different effects—but my opponent's claim that a lack of punishment for drug use would cause a significant influx of new users is false.

P2: As there would be no massive influx of new drug users, this point is irrelevant. In addition, many of the health problems associated with drug use are the result of their illegality, not the drugs themselves. When Portugal decriminalized drugs, drug-related deaths and overdoses decreased dramatically, as did the rate of infections of HIV and other STDs. [1] Legalization would also eliminate health problems associated with drug impurities. Heroin use alone, for example, causes no serious health problems—health problems associated with heroin use are actually because of heroin prohibition, which causes impurities in the drug, and the use of dirty, infected needles. [2]

P3: The problem with Con's evidence that drug use hurts workforce productivity is that it fails to take into account other variables. Once those are taken into account, the evidence paints an entirely different picture. Studies have found that illicit drug users actually receive higher wages than non-users. [3] [4] Other studies have found that illicit drug users generally have equally good or better productivity and absentee rates, and equally high or lower health-care costs. [5] [6] [7]

Gangs: Con claims that using my logic, we would should also legalize rape and murder. This is false. My logic is that the harm caused by drug prohibition greatly exceeds the harm that a legal market in drugs would cause. That logic could not be applied to legalization of rape or murder, since legalization of those things would obviously cause much greater harm than their continued prohibition. My point stands.

Police: Con claims that the abuse of power by police enforcing drug laws has to do with the police themselves, not the laws. This is partially true—there will always be corrupt police—but the drug laws themselves are responsible for a significant amount of the abuse and corruption. The difference between drug laws and laws against things like murder and rape is that murderers leave bodies and rapists leave rape victims. Thieves have stolen stuff. Such people can be found, prosecuted, and convicted without laws that violate the rights of innocent people, because they leave victims and evidence of their crimes. Drug users do not leave victims; they only victimize themselves. Police-state tactics are necessary to fight the drug war because that's the only way the government can find enough evidence to convict people. The asset-forfeiture laws used in my previous anecdote are an example of this. Asset forfeiture laws were considered clearly a violation of individual rights for much of America's history, but that changed during alcohol prohibition.

P1: He cites Portugal to explain how drug use wont spike without the threat of jail. So basically, because one country had success with decriminalization, that means all 195 will. We can't extrapolate like this. One country alone, that has also only partly legalized, is not enough to prove a point that everyone should do the same. Otherwise I could say that, since Saudi Arabia enforces the death penalty for drug trafficking and has one of the lowest drug use rates in the world, everyone should adopt the death penalty for it. Furthermore, Portugal is geographically and culturally different from other nations, indicating that different nations may react to changes in different ways.

So we recognize that drug use still likely spikes drastically in, at the very least, a majority of nations.

P2: There are better ways to solve OD and HIV than legalizing. We can open needle exchange centers and publicize proper dosage amounts. Neither of these requires legalizing, so we can gain the benefits of these without the disadvantages of flooding hospitals with new patients. He also never says how legalizing specifically solves for OD/HIV, as in, he never gave a reason why decrim lead to a decrease of HIV in Portugal.

Then he talks about impurities, but never impacts this. If he can explain why impurity causes health concerns we can have a discussion about it.

P3: He states there are other variables to decreased work productivity caused by drugs, but never tells us what those variables are.

Unfortunately because of their format I cannot check pro's sources to see their warrants, and all we have clashing here is evidence stating the opposite things. So lets boil this down to common sense. Who would you rather have working for you, someone who is on meth, or someone who is clean? Obviously, people on drugs would be less desirable for employers.

Onto his rebuilds.

Gangs:

The only argument he has here is that the harms of the black market outweigh the harms of a legalized drug system.
However, from debate we see that legalizing creates more drug users, abusers, and illnesses because of them. Thus, my impacts of hospital overcrowding outweigh gang violence. This means that, just as we keep rape illegal even though the opposite would solve human trafficking, we keep drugs illegal because we acknowledge worse things would happen if they were not. Gangs are an unfortunate side effect of criminalizing. But just as the drowsiness caused by cold-medications is an acceptable side effect of the pill, the gangs are an acceptable side effect of criminalizing drugs, because they solve a greater harm.

Police:

If I'm understanding this correctly, he's basically saying that we can find evidence for crimes like murder/rape without violating rights, but with drugs we can't. Thats not necessarily true. If police suspect someone for murder they can break into their house and take anything the believe is evidence. If a person accuses someone of rape, they can be taken from their job and forced into a police station for questioning. And with drugs, police have the right to take meth-filled cars and the like for investigation. So the point is, rights to privacy and property are constantly violated in *every* crime investigation, not just drugs, contrary to what my opponent seems to believe. Yet we all know that despite this supposed violation of rights, we must keep these crimes illegal, but his logic indicates we must not.

Also on the asset forfeiture laws. I really dont think it matters if its taking property from someone. If the police find somebody's car to be a meth factory on wheels, they have every right to take it.

P1: Here, Con initially argued that if criminal penalties for drug use were abolished, drug use would increase significantly. When this has actually been tried, in Portugal, that did not happen—hard drug use stayed about the same during the decade after decriminalization, showing that Con's claims are contradicted by reality. Now Con claims that Portugal is culturally and geographically different from other nations, without explaining why exactly these differences matter, so this evidence doesn't count. This is ridiculous. Con made a claim about what would happen if criminal penalties for drug use were taken away. When a country actually did that, his claim was completely contradicted by the evidence. And he continues to make that claim that, "So we recognize that drug use still likely spikes drastically in, at the very least, a majority of nations." Based on what? Based on absolutely nothing. Con has provided no evidence of his claim whatsoever, and no evidence or actual reasons that the Portugal experiment is invalid, other than the fact that Portugal, like every country, is different from other countries.

Not only does Con not offer any reasons that Portugal's differences from other nations would cause its experiment with drug decriminalization to not be valid evidence, it's completely absurd to think that this even could be the case. Are Portuguese people fundamentally different types of human beings? Con made an assertion about the way people respond to incentives—he claimed that if the punishments for drug use were eliminated, drug use would rise significantly. Unless the Portuguese are different kinds of people than everyone else, there's no reason that they wouldn't respond to incentives the way everyone else does. The reason drug use didn't increase is that most people who don't do heroin and crack and meth refrain from doing so, not because of punishments, but because they have no desire to do those drugs.

Con could indeed claim that Saudi Arabia proves that the death penalty results in less drug use—if an experiment with that drug policy were done. It isn't enough to say that Saudi Arabia has low drug usage rates (according to the Saudi's official reports) and has the death penalty for drug crimes, and therefore the two must be connected. If they didn't have the death penalty at one time, then introduced it, and then drug usage dropped, then that would be evidence that the death penalty deters drug use. Since that did not happen, the Saudi example is not evidence that the death penalty deters drug use. The Portugal example is evidence because it is an experiment—you can compare drug usage before and after the policy to see that policy's effects.

P2: The reason legalization reduces the health problems associated with drug use is that drug users will have more access to medical treatment, since they don't have to fear going to jail. The drugs themselves are also safer. Impurities in drugs can be harmful by themselves if dangerous ingredients are used. Additives in drugs are also harmful because users won't know how much of a drug they're actually using. The purity of drugs bought on the street can vary wildly, so a dose that would be safe at a lower quality sample could cause an overdose if the user has a higher quality sample.

P3: Con claims that "all we have clashing here is evidence stating the opposite things." That's an over-simplification. What we actually have is one person whose source is a anti-drug propaganda site, and another person whose sources are journals from well-respected medical and economic journals.

Gangs: Con claims that gang violence is unfortunate, but it's better than what would happen if drugs were legalized. The problems he claim would happen are increased drug use, which would supposedly lead to overcrowded hospitals and lower workforce productivity. Setting aside the fact that my opponent never actually provided any evidence that these things would really happen, how could anyone consider tens of thousands of people being murdered in the streets an acceptable price to pay for these things? Saying they're like the drowsiness caused by cold medicine is a colossal understatement—a better metaphor would be if there was a cold pill that caused cancer.

Police: Pro is correct that police could potentially violate people's rights when hunting rapists and murderers. So? The police-state tactics used today are the result of the drug war—they weren't used to hunt down any criminals before drug prohibition. There will always be corrupt police that violate the rights of innocent people, but the drug war makes these violations necessary to enforce the law, where they otherwise would not be.

In Conclusion:
1. I have shown that there is no evidence that legalization would lead to a significant increase in drug use. Con claimed that removing criminal penalties would lead to this—I have shown that this is false.
2. Con has claimed that increased health costs would be the result of legalization, but has provided no evidence to show this, and has been contradicted by the case of Portugal, where the opposite happened.
3. Con claimed that drug use would hurt the economy through lower workforce productivity, but this is overwhelmingly contradicted by empirical evidence.
4. Con absurdly claims that the tens of thousands of people murdered in the streets because of the drug war are an acceptable price to avoiding an increase in drug use, because of the problems that he claims this would cause: higher health care costs and lower workforce productivity.
5. I have shown that the drug war leads to the violation of the rights of innocent citizens; Con countered by arguing that rape and murder investigations also do this. Setting aside the point that the drug war is the cause of the vast majority of law enforcement caused rights-violations, this is still irrelevant because we aren't talking about legalizing those things. I am arguing that the damage caused by the drug war exceeds the damage caused by drug prohibition, and the harm done to innocent people by the police is part of the damage caused by the drug war. It doesn't matter if the police would do some of those things anyway—the drug war still increases the amount of them, which helps support my argument that the damage of the drug war exceeds the damage legalization could bring. It doesn't matter what the police do about rapists and murderers—it's irrelevant to whether the drug war or drug legalization would cause more harm.

P1: All he really does is re-use Portugal. He doesnt address my argument at all about this being one country, and how we cannot extrapolate the success of one country onto all 195. So we accept that this alone is not enough to say that everybody in the world should legalize drugs.

Furthermore, as I stated in previous round, Portugal did not completely legalize drugs. They decriminalized, meaning drug use is fine but sale is still illegal. One of the reasons that could explain why Portugal's drug use didnt go up is because it was still illegal to sell drugs, therefore you retain the deterrance effect of jail in order to prevent people from getting drugs in the first place. However, my opponent advocates the complete legalization of all types of drug offenses. This means sale becomes legal, meaning people can be more open about selling drugs. If we fully legalize, it would be legal to sell crack or cocaine in stores just like people do with cigarettes. Imagine a world where people buy meth in Wal-marts. Thats what differentiates Portugal from what my opponent wants to do. And obviously, with drugs right in front of people in a legal system, use goes up.

But even just a regular decriminalized (Portugal) system might not work. As previously states, this is one country out of 195. Not enough to draw conclusions.

P2: "Users will have more access to medical treatment".

Users have access to rehabilitation and medical systems now. And if people are severely ill from taking the drug, they can go to a hospital even if they're in jail, so this is irrelevant. Further, treatment programs exist in the criminal justice system, see drug courts (1).

He talks about poisonous additives in drugs. Source 2 details that there is virtually no threat of this. Drug dealers dont want to "cut" drugs and have all their customers dying on the streets. There is no motive, plus the source shows that the threat of adulterated drugs is exaggerated.

Then on purity. This argument is based on the false assumption that there is a "correct" dose of a drug. We see that this is not true because of their severe health damages that they cause (described in source 1 round 1), regardless of whether they took the "right" amount or not.

Finally, he drops my argument about being able to solve overdose and HIV without legalizing.

C3: "Anti-drug propoganda site." Well, I wouldnt think any drug site would be "pro-drugs". However, he doesnt address my common sense argument at all, about drug users obviously being worse workers. When our evidence shows opposite things, it comes down to reasoning and argumentation on mine and his part, and he doesnt give any of this. In short, he cant actually tell you why people who use drugs aren't less productive. Like I said before, just think. Do you want drug abusers working for you?

Gangs: Yes, preventing society from being consumed by drug abusers outweighs the deaths from the drug war. If all these drug users get sick and flood hospitals, then with the evidence I have in round 1 which details that hospitals are already flooded, it might be possible that we may not even have room for all these new patients. At that point, you have a bunch of ill drug abusers dying in the streets. You also get an increased number of people dying from the drugs themselves, which will make up for the lives no longer claimed by gangs.

Police: He seems to say that the drug war makes rights violations necessary. But again, enforcing any law sometimes requires violation of rights. Believe me, it would be great if we could gather evidence without breaking into people's houses, investigating their cars, etc. But we cant. We have to do these things to find information we need. Just because a crime can require violating the right to property to find evidence, it doesnt warrant legalization of the crime.

Debate summary:

Portugal is only one country out of 195, and its applicability this debate is also questionable considering they didnt even fully legalize.

Like bluesteel said, I thought the heroin addictiveness argument was interesting and it would have been nice if pro would have continued the argument of it after round 1. We could have had an interesting discussion about that.

Like bluesteel said, I thought the heroin addictiveness argument was interesting and it would have been nice if pro would have continued the argument of it after round 1. We could have had an interesting discussion about that.

(Not part of the debate, so voters shouldn't count this argument while voting)

Must have missed the part about hiring a meth user vs. a non-user. I'd hire the meth guy. Meth makes people amazingly productive and focused; they can work for days straight on a single task (usually not on legal work though). Sure, their work ethic would eventually deteriorate as their addiction destroyed their health, but then I could just fire them and hire a new meth user.

police - not unique to drugs, as Con points out. Pro's example reminds me of the Waco massacre, which was really scary, but non-drug related, if I recall correctly. So I drop this from my decision calculus.

pro has one main over-arching piece of offense: gangs
Pro is clearly winning this point - gangs are caused by drugs, but I'm given no estimate of how many lives could be saved by getting rid of gangs. Pro says hundreds of thousands at one point, but this seems like uncited conjecture. But since the number isn't contested, I guess I have to buy it. Clearly goes to pro.

con has one main over-arching piece of offense: hospitals
I'm told nearly 1 million people are hospitalized each year for illegal drug use. I wish this number were contested - it seems too high. The refutation is that no hospital increases were seen in Portugal. I don't buy the response to this that Portugal is just one country because no reason is provided that the same situation wouldn't occurs in the U.S (until the last round - "decrim vs. legalize", when LF can't respond). I liked LF's analysis against Saudi Arabia. So I flow this point as refuted by pro.

productivity
I'm told conflicting things - con uses logic: drug addicts aren't good workers. Pro cites empirical evidence that drug users have equal or greater productivity. This is a wash. Pro really should have pointed out that people who come to work high can be fired, to answer con's logic claim (as explained in "Just Say Yes").

So since gangs are the easiest way out, I vote on gangs. All in all, really well-argued by both sides.

Sources - pro's are much better
__________

LF, I'll say you changed my opinion in this debate, although you made many of these same arguments to me when I first joined this site and you convinced me of your position back then. Very interesting stuff about how heroin isn't really addictive.